


Making Out

by CaptainMercy42



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, Cursed Dean, Fluff, Internal Monologue, M/M, Not Beta Read, OFC witch, Revised Version, bit of gay panic, curse fic, kissing curse, not EXACTLY first kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainMercy42/pseuds/CaptainMercy42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old Italian witch needs a hard-to-find ingredient.  She figures that she can get the Winchesters to bring it to her by casting a harmless kissing curse on Dean.  This is what’s happening in reality, but we’re going to ride-along in Dean’s mind, which doesn't actually need any of the above info to figure things out.</p><p>(Revised 2/9/14)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Out

**Author's Note:**

> Hullo. This is now revised (by me - no beta :( ) thanks to a very encouraging comment.  
> Would love to hear your thoughts.  
> Run-on sentences are an issue. It's a battle between internal monologue voice and correct grammar.

 

Winchesters got cursed a little too much, thinks Dean. At this point it could be considered the curse of the Winchesters. That and dying. Eheh. But no, it wasn't funny. It sucked hard. It was so preposterous that he sometimes wondered if their lives really were the creation of an alcoholic writer looking to make it big, or at least achieve an acceptable word count before his next blackout.

So in retrospect it is no wonder that the waitress who somehow sloshed erosive acid all over his only pair of boots was actually in cahoots with the little old Italian lady who ran the only shoe shop in town, which, continuing in this retrospective, should have raised several hundred red flags by being nonchalantly open for business at 9:30pm on a Tuesday.

But the Winchesters deal confidently in monsters and fucking hate witches. This is for great reason. No one questions your illegal firearms or a hasty retreat when there's a monster afoot. However, slowly backing away from a shoe-devoted geriatric and not accepting her too good to be true price on a sweet pair of Tims is actually much harder to do. Yes, Dean hates witches as fiercely as he loathes a persistent groin itch. But you can't live your life dropping your merchandise and running for the door every time your check-out person is sporting offbeat jewelry. Just as you can't cut your freshly cursed Tims right off your feet and hurl the bleeding things right into her wrinkly, pasta-sucking face (not a stereotype - she talked about pasta A LOT while Dean browsed) the moment you knot the laces of the left boot, and realize that you've just loop-de-looped your way into another fantastically ill-timed curse-stravaganza.

Fuck those goddamned witches. Dean wants to write a song about it, but his rough-draft lyrics are barely eloquent enough to make it onto Cas's pimp car mix-tape.

The best part is the part where Dean can no longer speak. It's the fuck-duckiest of curses because unless Chuck decides that the witch is going to follow him around for the rest of the day offering his confused friends and family a very cliched exponential run-down of his situation (which would be shit writing, even for Chuck) then he's left playing the nod or grimace version of 20,000 questions for AS LONG AS IT TAKES to figure out the problem. AND ONLY AFTER someone pieces together the tale of Dean's shoes and the acid of doom (and they'll fixate on the most inconsequential details because he can't just bark at them to strap it the fuck down and focus on the big picture) will they begin searching for a solution. A process that will afford him very little comfort in the way it appears to be more of a book club meeting than a call to action to wrench the gift of vocal communication out of the gnarled clutches of a Neapolitan sorceress.

And this witch apparently took the legalese she encountered when incorporating her shoe empire right into her darkly magic little heart, because Dean's thumbs won't text and his hands keep betraying him by shredding any handwritten notes he tries to pass out as explanation and he wonders how many more undiscovered stipulations are lurking in his laces, just waiting to rear their ugly heads.

The shoes are comfortable. The witch isn't trying to kill him. She had kept cackling about love in her once-charming broken English, trying to act like she was some wise old owl doing Dean a great favor. Like there's going to be a lesson in all of it. Dean's honestly more leery of people who mess with him "for his own good" than people who openly want him dead, and he's pretty sure that there's something bigger at play here, but those thoughts are going to stay locked up and unshared until he croaks, or they are rendered irrelevant.

Just for the record, she cursed him and then she whammied him. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to make an old witch quake in her booties without speaking. She was thoroughly prepared and that’s just one more thing that really rankles him. He comes-to alone in the Impala, and drags his ass home.

The bunker is empty. Sam's somewhere else, mad at him, as he should be. But an angry, living Sam and living Cas and Charlie are better than mourning the loss of his brother, angel and best female friend with Kevin and Crowley. Fuck his life for ever making him perform the math behind that shitty word problem, and no, he will not be showing his work.

He tries to pray, but intent is now 9/10 of the law, and his brain gets rebooted a few times before he gives that crap idea up too. It sucks, because Cas would have come.

After a few days and a couple dozen missed calls (Dean has an epiphany that now his silence speaks more than words ever could... testing... testing... check check check... nope. Still cursed) Cas does come. He brings a reluctant Sam over and they ask him sooooo many questions, and then they call some people and do a little internet research and check out the shoe store. Dean swears off charades for life, unnecessarily, if Zachariah's 2014 is anything to go by.

Sam and Cas report that the little shoe store is closed with a notice that the Scozzafavos are off on their 55th annual trip to Florida and Dean thinks for one second that maybe this is supposed to teach him something about love, then record scratches back to the real world and thanks his stars that he wasn't able to speak that would-be chick-flick moment into the woods for the other falling trees to hear. The curse has probably prevented a good number of angsty exchanges and embarrassing bouts of emotionally stilted confessions, so that's a plus.

Fuck you, curse. You did not just hear that.

Cas and Sam are reading in the library while Dean sorts through a box of god-knows-what trying to catalog all the possible reversal spell ingredients housed in the Bunker. A creaking door startles everyone, and Charlie comes spilling through a supernaturally glowing arch and into their midst.

"Wooooo. Time to re-watch the original Stargate." She says in an adorable nerd-greeting.

Everyone stands with varying levels of exuberance, and they have her caught up on the known particulars of Dean's predicament just as she finally reaches out to give him a hug of greeting. She pulls him tight and puts her mouth close to his ear to murmur that it will all be ok. Dean squeezes his eyes shut and inhales with a sniff.

"Thanks, Charlie." He croaks.

All eyes hit him in a visual whoosh and Charlie jumps back, her hands on his shoulders.

"It speaks!" Her eyes sparkle as she wonders at how her very presence has seemingly healed her friend.

Dean furrows his brow, feeling his throat close back up as the heat from her cheek dissipates. He shakes his head slowly to warn them all is not yet right with his world.

"What were you doing at that exact moment?" Sam grills, ever the scientist.

Dean considers, but decides that the easiest option is to just recreate it. He holds his hands up first in a _bear with me, folks_ move, then slowly steps into Charlie's embrace once more. He feels a loosening in his neck as their cheeks brush against each other and like a magnet, his head turns in towards Charlie's face for optimum cursed throat comfort. Only as his lips rub against her skin does he realize he's free once more. Drat.

"Fuck me." He mumbles onto Charlie's cheekbone.

"Excuse me?" She's confused more than offended. He hopes.

Dean pulls back, reaches for her hand and brings it up to his lips. Nothing. Double drat. He moves towards her face once more and it’s her turn to pull back for a moment to give him a squinty eye.

"This isn't some kind of sex-pollen whump thing, right?"

Dean gives her his best _what nonsense is this?_ while Sam just shakes his head and chuckles, thus proving that it is biologically impossible to resist reading about all the weird and kinky things people want to do to you when they think you're just some literary paper doll.

Dean considers Charlie's neck, but quickly tosses that idea as too risky. Farther away from her mouth, yes, but not a super platonic area of the body to invade without permission. He sighs and puts his lips back on her cheek with care.

"It's a kissing curse." He projects into Charlie as politely as he can. But what the fuck is the point of only letting him talk when his lips are otherwise engaged? Hmmm. He moves back and points to his cheek. Charlie stares. Sam and Cas stare. Whatever. Talking wasn't that great. It was mostly a way to blow off steam, piss people off and demand pie, and he was ingenious enough to find new ways to accomplish those tasks.

But Charlie loves him like a sister and her internal motherboard has at least three processors so she finally catches on and lays one on him.

"Jesus Christ this is stupid." He gushes, wasting 40% of his words on blasphemy. Charlie straightens and laughs. Sam smiles. Ten points for Scozzafavo. Cas takes two steps closer, squinting . Deep breath, Dean, and no more jumping the gun with arbitrary point distributions, especially to the houses of witches.

"So you can only speak when you are engaged in romantic contact with another person?" Cas clarifies.

Charlie throws her spindly arms around his neck and pulls him down for another smooch.

"Well hands are out. I don't know how _romantic_ it has to b-"

Magic cuts him off in the middle of a two-letter word when Charlie blows a raspberry into his scruff. He wants to laugh and cry and stab something with a silver knife and spoon with an anonymous sex partner all at the same time.

Dean counts the number of anonymous sex partners he's landed without uttering one single word and yeah he's pretty, but that number is zero, which puts sex pollen right at the top of his _fictitious items Dean hopes are based in reality_ list.

“Cas can you like, grace kiss him or something?” Sam easily hides his smirk behind the part of his face that went to Hell (which is his whole face), but Dean catches it in his eyes and wants to hiss. Cas takes another step closer and tilts his head. Dean feels a wave of electricity pass over his skin like heat and then through it like some pumping bass, which is pretty freaking weird and more than a little bit awesome, but doesn’t do anything for the frog in his throat. The good feeling dissolves and Cas shakes his head. Dean adds _grace-kisses_ to his list of things men should totally be able to receive from angels in a strictly platonic capacity. He then imagines Cas kissing Sam with his grace, which is kind of what he’s been doing with the whole soul healing. But no- it’s not exactly the same because a grace-kiss would be just because. And no, Cas probably shouldn’t be handing them out to everyone because his grace is precious and stolen, so Dean doesn’t really know whose grace actually just kissed him when it comes right down to it.

"Can you write things down?" Charlie asks, and Sam opens his mouth to explain the _this note will self-destruct..._ act when Dean holds his hand up for another _wait a minute_.

He lopes to a table that no one is standing near and scribbles a note down, folding it up quickly so no one can see. He looks up and assesses his audience. Charlie is his fall-back so she should be ruled out as his guinea pig. He approaches Sam with the note outstretched and stands on his toes to place the chastest of brotherly pecks on his cheek while sliding the note into his hand. _Mission: possible_. Sam coughs and shakes off the weird, then reads it out loud.

 _"This is only a test. There's ham in the fridge for dinner but we could use eggs or potatoes_."

"You could have told us anything and you went with a shopping list?" Sam. Incredulous to a fault. Like you're required to start spewing your feelings all over as soon as there's something preventing you from doing just that. Dean shrugs and snuffs. His feelings are unspoken but obvious. Dean no can talk. Dean want talk again. Dean want pie (unspoken in present company only - not applicable in a public dining situation).

"What exactly is a curse that only allows one to talk while kissing trying to accomplish?" Castiel queries, and the think tank is underway.

"Is this like Beauty and the Beast? Does someone have to love him for who he is on the inside?" Charlie might have been prepared to squeal at the idea of an evil curse with a sweet-ass Disney moral. Cas shakes his head.

"Falling in love with Dean with voice intact would be a surer test of a potential mate's true merit." Cas expertly delivers an insult like a sage and sensitive insight, and Dean thinks that it is telling that the guy's new angel suit fits him that much classier now, because this last stint as a mud monkey has refined his understanding of the nuances of English just as much as it has his fashion sense.

Charlie giggles. Minus 10 for...Ravenclaw? One more thought he benefits from keeping to himself.

"Is it punishment for a bad hook-up?" Sam wonders aloud. "Did you ditch this woman's daughter or something?"

Dean shakes no, not willing to kiss and tell everyone that not too long after he lost his second virginity to that very confused porn star, the near-constant threat of the death and destruction of his family had effectively destroyed his libido.

"Well you can only talk while being intimate with someone so maybe it's supposed to be making you realize that physical affection is a way to communicate your feelings and not just an animal appetite.” Oh, Sam of many feelings. Poppy-fucking-cock. Dean waves Charlie over and pokes his head down to her height, a bit cheekily. She sighs and smooches.

"This was a witch, not my fairy godmother, so let's just cook up a cure and get it off me."

It feels like time for a dramatic exit and Dean enjoys applying basic-cable pacing to his other-worldly life so he walks off into the kitchen to make everyone coffee. The other three huddle for a moment to confer. Turns out Charlie is only back from Oz for an hour - something to do with well timed lunar eclipses and monkey wing powder, so she soon bids Dean a rather upbeat goodbye that feels strange for not needing to be bookended with some kind of physical affection. He waves. She smirks like she already knows the end of this story. He wonders momentarily if Carver Edlund has actually been blown over to Oz. He would make a wonderful wizard.

Cas decides to call Crowley, and pouts about it as if it is someone else's idea. He ends up leaving a message and getting a return text that reads:

_Poor Squirrel. Lose my number until you've got a list of ingredients and the what's in it for me._

Sam commandeers some love curse books and begins listing curse qualities like an equation. Cas sighs and goes out. He returns with eggs, potatoes and cherry pie and they eat in respectful silence. With nothing left to do (except fix this whole mess), Dean goes to his room to sulk. He can't think of anything to say that is even worth the peck toll for note passing.

The night passes exactly as slowly as five episodes of Dr. Sexy, with commercials. That and some drinking cures most of Dean's urge to bitch. At night, being cursed isn't actually that much different from being regular bitter-and-alone Dean. But even without speech he can still count his blessings. Two of them are sitting in the library trying to help him. What’s new, right? The three of them together are like a cyclical daisy-chain of redemption, each man being pulled out of the depths of some kind of certain destruction by the man behind him, and proceeding to rescue the man in front.

And Dean plays the part of the guilty and denies himself more than a few moments of listening in on Cas's healing of Sam's body and soul because he knows that's what Sam needs. And Dean would spend a year in self inflicted, speechless solitary if he thought it’d make the guy happy, but he’d never apologize for his intentions (and mean it). He’d also never tell Sam how idiotically selfish it is to think you’re ready to die. Like it’s even about you - as if you were ever really living for yourself in the first place. Yeah so, they broke almost everything they touched. If that were all they did then America’d be one giant fucking landfill right now and they’d be able to give a tour that sounds like “on your left you’ll see the remains of the Christian apocalypse and to the right you’ll see a hospital reduced to ruins by hungry leviathan” and that tour would never get to feature a living, breathing human. So all in all they were breaking-even on some wonky cosmic scale and the powers-that-be were apparently down with that kind of fucked up balance and he wishes Sam and Cas would see that so they could quit moping about penance or righteousness or being prepared to finally kick the bucket. He thinks about writing the landfill analogy down and saving it for when he can talk again, but who is he kidding? He can fit it all, and more into one good clap on the back if he tries hard enough. It's all about timing.

He wakes with a scramble for his gun when Cas comes to usher him into the library for what has the potential to be the most incestuously homoerotic interrogation in the history of hunting. Thankfully, it seems like Sam and Cas have already discussed how they were going to run this, because there's a neatly written quiz on the table that asks him all sorts of questions about the curse and the witch and the boots and the exact sequence of events. He plunks down and fills it out dutifully, but senses trouble when he gets up, ready to pass the four finished pages to Sam with another brotherly face bump. He can feel a tension in his hands like he might go confetti crazy and he freezes in place. Sam’s in front of him and he freezes too, but his eyes flick to the side, reminding Dean that Cas isn’t anywhere in his field of vision. Dean opens his mouth and, oh hey there, words come out so Cas has been located.

“Wait.” Dean coughs out. He closes his eyes and gives his head the smallest of _what the fuck is my life_ shakes.

Cas's lips are on his neck and he finally can identify the buzz that’s been playing in his ears ever since Charlie had fallen over what makes him talk. It was a strange kind of nervous anticipation that was flashing him back to a warm day in May when a 13 year old Dean blew off school to hang around the as-of-yet unopened town pool. The water was crystal and had to be freezing, even though the air temperature was in the high seventies so he shuffled around on the cool tile before nutting up and jumping in. The plunge had made him convulse more than shiver and sent his stomach to his throat. His tummy took a similar path now. Cas's time had come to nut up and jump in, and any qualm, if present, were completely undetectable. Though it’s debatable how many qualms you can effectively detect when a constantly too-close friend’s lips are suddenly caressing your throat from just over your left shoulder.

“Here, c’mon. Grab it.” Dean waves his quiz a bit frantically and makes Sam reach out and snatch it. “Look at it. Read it over. Questions? She couldn’t have been taller than five feet. I didn’t smell anything in the store except leather.” Dean indicates some spot on the page without moving his shoulders, neck or head. “It went into effect when I tied the laces, but I’m able to take the shoes off so - Jesus, Cas. You trying to leave a mark?”

Sarcastic humor. That is how he would get through this.

“Well it would not be the first time, and would likely be less permanent."

Dean feels a hand on his shoulder as Cas steadies himself and wasn’t that annoying? Humanity the great teacher had informed him that leaning is a thing. Splendid. Sam just raises an eyebrow at them and takes Dean's answers over to his hill of open spellbooks and hunkers down.

Dean turns to Cas and glares as he rubs his moist neck. Grace-kissed and now tongued by an angel, but his lips must feel neglected because they're suddenly demanding to be licked. Cas watches with an angelic lack of focus that makes Dean wonder if he can usually see everything all at once unless he bothers to scrutinze something very sqintingly.

He opens his mouth to moan about how he _seriously_ has to put a bell on Cas, but of course nothing comes out. Cas steps forward to remedy that, but there's no way Dean is puckering up for a frontal assault, so he catches the unnaturally cool angel with both hands and pushes Cas back with unecessary care, considering the guy walks around with the ability to summon Superman strength in the blink of an eye. Cas steps back and tilts his head in understanding. Well that's new.

Dean runs off to his bedroom, unclear at this point what time it is. He just really doesn't want his presence being mistaken for having something to say. Which he totally does not have. Nothing to say here.

Well, maybe if Charlie were here he'd drink a few beers and endure a dorky but awesome marathon of some sort and listen to her emote about how crazy it must have been for Sam to body-swap with a teenager, or for Dean to father an Amazon (she knows enough to shy away from hell talk) and only after they were both pie-full and sleep deprived he perhaps would mention that having his best dude/angel friend in the world macking on him on two different planes of reality actually wasn't all that uncomfortable. Because Charlie has read the books and she's down with the subtext and she's a genius so she'd understand that the ratio of his surprise is about 20% _man vessel whoa there_ and 80% _those boyfriend jokes are ...not jokes?_ Basically he had been throwing all the suggestive remarks about their _profound bond_ into the bin where he calls Sam a princess (which he's not) when in actuality they should be in the bin with calling Sam a moose (which he totally is).

But barring a fantasy slumber party with someone who has to click her heels together to get there, he had nothing to say.

Sam knocks, and leans in, updating him on the fact that they have a pretty promising list of spell breaking ingredients going, though at least one of the items can only be attained by an angel who can still BAMF, which basically means Crowley. Fucking great.

A half a day later Cas knocks, and leans in, but gets held up on the speaking part. Dean smiles because any normal human would get flipped off for daring to act tongue-tied in front of the guy who can't talk, but Cas gets a pass. He steps into the room fully and brushes his hands together.

"I just wanted to let you know that I have found many of the more obscure ingredients we will need, in storage here. Also I miss speaking with you."

He kinda just slips that in. Huh. Dean looks up at Cas from his slouch on the bed. He's lost in his head, but Cas reads it as something else and begins to shuffle towards the door. Dean's throat aches as he watches his friend turn to leave. Exposing his back to a Winchester? Dean's up in a flash, flipping Cas around and crowding him against the doorframe. His brain goes offline and his mouth ends up on the joint below Cas's ear, which spells relief like a thousand Ricolaaaa and he's tempted to yell that into Cas's face but it would definitely be adding injury to the inherent insult of Cas never getting anything.

"You trying to get me to make out with you, Cas?" And good god, talking feels like drinking Diet Coke and popping a Mentos of awesome.

"Make what out?" Cas responds, frozen in an oddly welcoming posture of 1/3 _defense_ and 2/3 _I didn't touch your boob, you walked into my hand_ which leaves Dean so full of an indefinable charge that he's wondering if the better release would be to lick the man or give him a noogie. Well, let's not go for broke just yet. Dean runs his knuckles up the back of Cas's neck as a casual invitation to noogie-town (population: Cas). He digs his knuckles in and grinds, grinning as he shamelessly smooshes Cas into the doorframe.

"Stop." Cas protests while beginning to smile. "That... it tickles."

It feels good, like all the candy and no stomach ache, so Dean continues by deftly jabbing his fingers into the angel's midriff, past that damned silly coat, which at this point Cas has only re-donned for the Winchester's nostalgia, he's sure. He finds more brick wall under delicate layers of clothing and skin, and he rakes his digits into it like he's digging for an alien fetus. Cas smirks and turns away and Dean revels in for once being the playful kid who doesn't know any better against the older boy who can really take a lickin'. It feels so good not to worry about hurting someone for five minutes. Or maybe it feels good to know he couldn’t if he tried. Either way, it gets even better, as Cas’s response to tickling is a bit more ethereal than Dean would have imagined.

Yes, mere days ago he was a human with an angel blade shoved through his chest, but now he's _radiating grace kisses_ instead of laughter. Dean stands back and shivers as something heavenly pulses through him. He wants to tell Cas how awesome it is, but they're not kissing so he just gapes like a fish while Cas takes a breath, then tilts his head, this time contemplating.

Cas takes the initiative and steps over to Dean, kissing his cheek because he wants to hear what Dean wants to say and the solution is odd and inconvenient but so so far from impossible or even unpleasant and Dean wonders if these were the kind of kisses Jesus used to sling around amongst his disciples because those kisses had sounded weird but Cas's kisses are unabashed and kind and they make Dean feel like forgiveness is the easiest thing in the world, even for someone like him.

"That grace touch thing is pretty awesome." He sighs, because he can momentarily accept that his murderous past is forgotten and be tongued by an angel but he can't actually use the word "kiss" to label their activities.

"I've often wondered how it would be interpreted by a human." Cas steps back a foot, smiles and _blinks_ , which indicates some kind of personal growth that is unreliant on whether he's an Eliot or ET, deep down.

Dean leans in towards Cas while trying to think of a way to describe it that Cas might be able to understand, and lucky for his loss for a good simile, he notices another silhouette in the hallway and hello, Sam.

"We were just talkin'." He says into Cas's neck (which smells like new clothes, in case anyone was wondering).

"Good. Now maybe you'll actually come help us fix you instead of hiding in here." Dean whips his head around to glare at the accusation.

"I wasn't hiding."

Well that shouldn't have just come out unless lips were somewhere on his person. Ah. Cas seems to be working on the same spot as before and Dean realizes that he definitely intends to leave a mark, which feels a little less Jesus and a little more Gabriel. At least he's running with the playful teasing vibe they currently have going. He smirks and shudders to think how stoic Cas would have been in this same scenario a few years ago.

"Fine. Not hiding." Sam is so good at being very quietly testy. Dean doesn't really have an answer but he's still at liberty to speak and it seems rude to subject Sam to this level of weird in his own hallway without seizing every moment.

"Nope."

Sam blinks. Dean blinks. Dean watches Sam not be shocked and awed by the application of an _mangelic_ hickey in his presence, and it annoys Dean. Yes Charlie would be on board and unsurprised but Sam is supposed to be working with exactly what he's been given, which is at least 100 eye fulls of Dean working his magic on very womanly women before he slams the door and stalks off to read magazines at a 24 hour grocery. So what gives? Is brain bleach a thing and has Sam used too much of it? How is his carefully constructed image of his hedonistic older brother not crumbling apart and sending him into some kind of philosophical crisis right now?

Sam gives Cas a searching look that he can’t see (with his eyes, who knows what kind of coverage he actually maintains) and then looks at Dean with the _if you hurt my little girl, so help me_ glare that is only recognizable from movies Dean’s seen, because in real life, meeting a girl’s father is basically a deal-breaker. Then Sam turns around and saunters back off to the library with an almost imperceptible head shake.

Well he has been to Hell and come back without a soul, so the whole we-are-not-our-vessel concept is probably ingrained pretty deeply into his worldview. And Cas is a nothing (everything?) who got shoved into a guy and it's not as if they're actually kissing for the sake of kissing and whoa - maybe, despite Dean repeatedly using women to appease his sexual desires, Sam has somehow remained enough of a Stanford-bound granola cruncher to not even consider his perceived sexual preference to be a defining character trait.

“I’ll be in the library. Don’t take all night.” Sam’s voice wafts down the hall, mocking him. He clears his throat.

"Uh, Cas, we're good here."

Cas pulls his mouth off of what is arguably more Dean's trapezius than his neck. There's a quiet pop at the loss of suction and Dean grits his teeth and wills himself not to wince. Sam's not the only one who can be down with whatever. Fuck. Scratch all that credit he just handed over to a liberal arts education. Dean Winchester practically invented acceptance, and he’s definitely the one who instilled it in Sam. Granted, he always just thought that it was the natural response to hating the people who preached the opposite - damnation for a bunch of poor souls they didn’t even know, who were just trying to get off. If you weren’t for them, you were against them, which just happened to land him with all the free-thinkers. That was cool. Free-thinkers were way better in bed. He had figured their camaraderie ended there. Cas had said it, God was indifferent.

Speaking of which - Dean turned and faced the angel once more, giving him a quizzical look and pointing at his cheek. Cas obliged.

“Hey, are you still indifferent to gender in that body?”

“I don’t understand the question.” Cas murmured into Dean’s stubble without pulling back.

“Like if that reaper had been a guy who took you in and wanted to show you the ropes, you think you still would have..?”

They pull away from each other mutually. Cas stares at Dean and Dean misses grace-kisses because all he’s catching behind the usual deadpan is flickers of human emotions that resemble regret or hesitation and Cas is juiced right now, so any cracks in his shiny new shell just threaten the beginning of another long treck downhill, into another water supply or dirty crypt or purgatorial plane of existence or maybe even somewhere worse.

“I suppose I would have.”

Cas drops it like it’s simple, like a marble and it lands like an atom bomb because Dean’s pornographic mind picks a nice-looking, taller guy and subs him in for the hot little reaper who seduced his buddy. The switch is quick and easy because yeah, he’s pictured it in pretty great detail. That’s totally allowed, because a small pocket of humanity is right now picturing Dean getting railed by his own brother and those people are actually all pretty good people, so it just goes to show you how crazed those hellfire and damnation lunatics are, because God didn’t have time for THE APOCALYPSE and people think that there’s something out there ready to police their stupid imaginations.

“Though-” and thank the almightily indifferent God Cas is talking again because Dean’s knuckles are going white as he gets to the part where tender touches turn rougher, but maybe Cas kind of likes it - “I believe that my knowledge of your previous relationships and my desire to be accepted by you and your brother make heterosexual relations the more obvious choice.”

Whoosh. Mushroom cloud. And that’s just it, isn’t it? Dean had tried to introduce Cas to the wonderful world of sex with women. He’d tried to bankroll it. At first it hadn’t stuck, but it’s not like the invitation was ever revoked. And Dean had been proud of him as soon as Cas announced he finally lost it. It was healthy. It was something Dean and Sam couldn’t do for him, or each other, despite how adamantly the forums insisted otherwise. They all had to go out from time to time and find girls. Cas had finally joined the big boy club.

But if Cas had decided to go pop his gay cherry it would have been different. Because Dean would have been buying Cas a dick, which Dean already had. That’s just not fiscally responsible. If Dean were a barber, he wouldn't have sent Cas out to some strip mall for his first haircut and shave either. That’s not what friends do. Especially open-minded friends who love all kinds of sex and are not as uptight and judgmental as they previously thought that their brother thought they were.

Dean wonders where he was going with this train of thought.

“We should get to the library.” Cas intones, awkwardly.

Dean can’t feel his grace anymore, just a tingly itch over the drying hickey on his trap. He pushes Cas back once again into the door frame of his bedroom and Cas allows it, just as he allows Dean’s forearm to press on his collarbone and his mouth to hit somewhere around the side of his eye.

“Listen, if you decide to take yourself on a test-drive with a dude, you come to me first. You hear?” He’s being barky, pushy Dean and Cas is letting him, which is all sorts of wrong considering he’s dictating (dick-tating?) resolutions regarding the guy’s sex life that were presented, moved, seconded and passed unanimously by Dean and only Dean. But it’s only a precaution. A way to tell Cas that he cares enough to share what he’s got if it’s ever actually what Cas is looking for. Because Dean's flippant enough about sex to go out and buy it for someone, so it’s not like this is any kind of confession. It’s more like confirmation that sex is just a recreational vehicle and if Cas wants to take a break from mopeds and try a three-wheeler, well Dean’s awesome enough to let him borrow his. It means that Dean is cool as shit with whatever and Cas should never have to question that or make decisions based on any assumptions to the contrary.

Cas lifts his hand and cups Dean’s cheek and he dials his ray-gun gaze to _incapacitate_ and Dean breathes out so long he’s afraid of the gaspy whine that’s inevitable on the intake.

“I believe it is time for you to stop talking.” He rumbles, somewhere in the registry of a sub-woofer, then straightens up, which nudges Dean away so that they are still all up in each other’s space but no longer touching. Dean furrows his brow at Cas and has the audacity to look annoyed. Cas just presses his lips into a line and steps into the hall, making his way towards the glow of the library lamps.

Dean follows, pouting as his larynx gets sandbagged once again. It takes him the short trip down the hall to realize he has just created the Dean Winchester sex-catch 22 by insisting that sex is inherently meaningless, but that he should be first on a hierarchical list of possible partners. But that list can’t actually be justified in a world where one truly believes sex is meaningless, right?

“Dean. Get to work.” Sam snaps him out of his spiraling conundrum, and yeah he should definitely think about something else now.

Dean proceeds to makes great headway and finds a really good website on the topic, believe it or not. The rub here is that they need essence of kraken, which is basically impossible to find, and they need to be in the presence of the actual curse-er to cast the repeal. There’s alternate approaches that you can do in the privacy of your own bunker, but they involve severing limbs and fresh lambs blood and Dean is sure as hell not going to slaughter a little baby sheep so that he can turn around and call Sam a bitch again. So their list goes 1) Essence of kraken 2) a bunch of stuff we have, measured and 3) Italian shoe witch.

Cas texts Crowley about the essence and Crowley is sure to let them know that he has boatloads of it (literally, viking ships full) but it comes with a price, but he’s kind of busy so look behind you (there it is on the table!) and be ready to pay up later because now they owe him. Owing Crowley is the worst, because it essentially means pausing the quest to kill him until he can think of something he wants from them. And they’re going to wait around like the true-hearted good guys that they are (occasionally, or in their dreams) and respect this fucked-up truce until he double crosses them once again. Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad. It _is_ important that they actually feel like the good guys every once in a while.

They show up at the shoe store at 9:30pm on a Tuesday exactly two weeks after Dean was originally cursed. Lights are on and grandma fettuccine is home. They've got Cas going round the back as insurance, and they’re prepared to lay many different forms of smack-downs on her from the front, but she has a few tricks up her sleeve as well. It’s uncanny how these things always seem to go the same way.

So Dean’s up on a wall and Sam’s slumped over bench, with his face hanging down in front of an angled mirror and Cas is trying to discern whether ganking the woman outright will leave Dean left with only lamb-slaughtering as an option and isn’t it telling that all three of them are ready and willing to drop an old lady off a cliff it it means sparing themselves the guilt and anguish of home butchering. Dean idly wonders if Cas in his spare time goes around whispering sweet nothings and tidings of joy into the ears of beef cattle before bingeing on their sweet, sweet hamburgers.

The essence of kraken rolls out of Dean’s pocket and onto the floor, where Mama Fertelli eyes it.

“I remove his curse for the kraken.” She states.

And she doesn't really have room to bargain because Cas is smite-enabled. But he’s efficient and he doesn't particularly enjoy bloodshed, and he is pretty sure that they can circle back after a short recoup with a list of nefarious things essence of kraken is used for and a plan to thwart this lady’s bigger picture, so he gives her the essence and Dean thuds to the ground and Sam groans.

“Really?” Dean says, because a job well done ends in ganked witch. End of story.

“Really.” Says Cas, and he walks out the door and takes his place in the back seat of the Impala (it was pointless to drive two cars) and is shortly joined by tired looking Sam and Dean, who were fully planning on finishing the job before the old hag disappeared in a puff of green white and red smoke like some kind of hacky, pizza-loving magician. They drive back to the bunker in relative silence, considering Dean is free to talk again. But it’s not like you're required to start spewing your feelings all over as soon as there's nothing preventing you from doing just that.

So all’s well that ends well, he thinks inside the safety of his own frazzled mind. They owe Crowley, they’ve spent zero time looking for Gadreel, they don’t know the first thing about where Metatron is or what the new earth-angel civil war is all about. They don't know when someone from that front, or the Metatron angle is going to catch up with Cas again, and they basically just handed a really hard-to-find magical substance to a witch who knows how to dot her i’s and cross her t’s. On top of it all, Dean has managed to give his best friend an ultimatum that could be interpreted _hey there, if you ever feel the need to suck a dick, it had better be mine_ which feels slightly more skeevy than his _it could be our last night on earth_ attempt to get into Jo’s pants. Ah, regrets. And good thing Jo had the foresight to realize their situation was dire enough that any parties that remained alive the following night probably wouldn't actually want the possibly awkward and/or sweaty first-time-with-an-old-friend sex to be their last memory of the other. Uh. Not that it would have meant anything.

They go home. They eat. Sam finally bothers to ask Cas if he still sleeps. He says not generally. Dean plunks down on a couch and watches a bunch of TV. Sam goes to bed and Cas disappears until he appears next to Dean on the couch. He stares at the TV so Dean mutes the commercials and looks at him. Cas shifts to face him.

“I have rescued you and failed you many times over. I have done this because I love you, and your brother, and because you are my family now.”

Dean cringes at the L word.

“I have tried to understand the nuances of human sexual relations, but it is nearly impossible, at least in your current culture.”

Yeah, he gets it. So Dean isn’t the only one lost in the swirling eddies of desire versus L-word versus physical gratification. That’s good. Well, if you consider being just as lost as a baby in a trenchcoat to be good. Cas looks down at the couch, which Dean expects will start smoking any minute from the heat of his gaze.

“I love you the most, Dean.” Dean swallows a familiar amphibian when Cas says that damned word. “Now that I have access to grace again I’m able to express this in ways that I am more accustomed to, and that you seem to accept.” Dean feels the familiar wave of Cas’s grace passing over him, tickling his spine and definitely getting his qi flowing better than it has been.

“But rest assured,” and now Cas begins to grin almost wickedly, “that if I lose my grace for any reason, then I will begin to desire physical affection once more, and unless you are otherwise committed, you will be the ‘dude’ that I will be ‘test driving’.”

Dean smiles through the haze of his grace-buzz. He reaches over and tousles Cas’s hair roughly, but the angel barely sways under his petting. Cas doesn't get a lot of things right, at least, not on the first try, but Cas is right about this. Whatever their relationship is, it tends to all circle back to that fucked up universal balance that can’t be audited with numbers, but maybe is sitting in an office somewhere in heaven on a graph that has 5 or 6 dimensions. Dean needs Cas and Cas loves Dean, but there’s a time and a place to tell someone you love them by sticking your tongue in any number of their orifices, and it’s not right now. If Cas stays angeled-up forever then Dean’s gonna age, and eventually have to worry about sneaking the bastard into heaven. If Cas gets cut down to man-size again, well then, Dean just might get to take a whack at an alternative lifestyle. Because the guy loves Dean and looks up to Dean and Dean may be happy that Cas didn't die a virgin that one time, but that doesn't mean he wants to walk around the bunker wondering who’s going to slink out of human Cas’s bedroom door next when Dean's right there, possibly queer and could totally get used it.

He’s a little too happy to consider that tiny, festering question of whether he’s got to feel guilty about banging through as many hot chicks as he wants in the interim so he stuffs it into back of his mind for when it’s actually relevant. And who knows when that will be, given that they’re in the bunker with a shitload of crappy crap to get done and it’s not exactly convenient to go driving out to bars just to drunkenly hook up with girls in the back of the Impala because they’re both too charged to make it back to her house, or a motel.

And if Dean notices that Cas seems to be up in his business just a little bit more every time he starts to get that familiar itch, slinging his grace waves around for Dean and only Dean, sometimes so much so that he’s in what can only be compared to a state of post-coital euphoria, he doesn't say anything. How exactly would you tell your best friend to stop whammying your libido with awesome sauce anyway? And _why_ would you, when the sauce is just so awesome?

The last question Dean is forced to ignore is just what exactly angel Cas is getting out of the whole deal. It’s a question that will scramble Dean’s brain long before the idea that there is an all-powerful god that will someday die. Because Chuck likes Dean about as much as Death does but Cas LOVES Dean for all his thousands of negatives and the, count them, three positive things that Dean can actually do for Cas which are 1) Try to save his life whenever necessary/possible 2) Smile at him and 3) Roughhouse with him like he’s some fun-sized pet dragon. Dean’s not even sure if number three exists for Cas’s pleasure or his own, because aside from somehow lifting the emotional burden of basically 30 years of adult pressures (and 40 years of hell!), it also for some reason weirds Sam out more than that time that Dean got hit with a kissing curse and had to rub his lips all over his angel best friend.


End file.
